Antarctica in 2011

Ice averaging roughly 2,160 m (7,085 ft) in thickness covers more than 98% of the continent of Antarctica, which has an area of 14.2 million sq km (5.5 million sq mi). There is no indigenous human population, and there is no land-based industry. Human activity consists mainly of scientific research. The 49-country Antarctic Treaty is the managerial mechanism for the region south of latitude 60° S, which includes all of Antarctica. The treaty reserves the area for peaceful purposes, encourages cooperation in science, prescribes environmental protection, allows inspections to verify adherence, and defers the issue of territorial sovereignty.

On Oct. 31, 2011, Malaysia acceded to the Antarctic Treaty, as a nonconsultative party; it planned to become a consultative party in the future. Since 1997, when New Zealand opened its facilities at Scott Base to Malaysia, the Malaysians had supported about 62 research projects in Antarctica involving some 60 scientists.

At the 34th Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting (ATCM), held in Buenos Aires on June 20–July 1, 2011, approximately 350 diplomats, Antarctic program managers, logistics experts, and polar scientists from 48 countries—including the 28 consultative parties with a scientific presence in the Antarctic—gathered to discuss environmental and management issues. Representatives of 16 international and intergovernmental organizations also participated as observers, and the Committee for Environmental Protection (CEP) met as well.

The ATCM representatives reviewed reports from station inspections conducted by representatives from Japan and Australia. While those reports demonstrated that most consultative parties were adhering to the requirements of the treaty’s Protocol on Environmental Protection, they also pointed out that sharing information and technology could improve management of the facilities. Other matters the representatives deliberated included proposals on how to prevent unauthorized access to Antarctica and preliminary discussions regarding the risks that tsunamis could pose to the large number of coastal research stations.

The CEP’s discussions included contemplating the potential environmental effects of drilling into subglacial Lake Ellsworth, revising the management plan governing 10 Antarctic Specially Protected Areas, and airing concerns about ways to maintain a pristine environment on the continent under sustained human presence; special attention was focused on preventing the introduction of nonnative species. The committee also reviewed the plans for South Korea’s Jang Bogo research station at Terra Nova Bay, commenting on how an appropriately designed structure, sustainable energy production, and other factors would reduce the station’s environmental impact.

During the 2010–11 austral summer, 33,824 tourists visited the continent, with some 33,438 arriving by ship. Compared with 2009–10, the number of tourists decreased by 8.3%, primarily because several cruise-only programs were canceled after the International Maritime Organization ban on using heavy fuel oil in the Antarctic Treaty area took affect in August. Of the 2010–11 visits, 19,065 landed in the Antarctic Treaty area, and 14,373 participated in large cruise-only trips. About 386 participated in multiday land-based expeditions to the continental interior, and another 531 traveled by air and ship to Antarctica and landed on the continent.

In January the U.S. completed construction of a $271 million neutrino detector array at the South Pole when the final basketball-sized optical sensor was installed in a hole 1.5 km (0.9 mi) deep in the ice sheet. The array was designed to use the clear bubble-free ice as a medium to detect faint flashes of light generated when fast-moving neutrinos collided with the ice to produce muons.

The massive magnitude-9.0 earthquake that shook Japan on March 11, 2011, was felt as far south as Antarctica. A team of researchers from the University of California, Santa Cruz, who were remotely monitoring the Whillans Ice Stream that feeds into the Ross Ice Shelf, observed that the surface seismic waves generated by the temblor caused the ice stream to slide by 0.5 m (1.6 ft), but they did not believe that the shock destabilized the ice stream. A tsunami produced by the quake arrived in Antarctica about 18 hours later after having traveled some 12,880 km (8,000 mi), and it battered the Suzerberger Ice Shelf in West Antarctica. A piece of ice the size of Manhattan Island broke off the ice shelf, which until then had been stable for 46 years. The largest of the resulting icebergs was about 6.5 × 9.5 km (4 × 5.9 mi) and some 80 m (260 ft) thick.

The hole in the atmosphere’s ozone layer that forms above Antarctica during the austral spring on September 12 reached its peak size of 25.9 million sq km (10 million sq mi), the ninth largest hole on record. Australian scientists, reporting in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, however, believed that they had evidence that the hole was becoming smaller, something that most scientists had not expected to see until after 2020. By identifying the natural influences on the year-to-year variations in the quantity of atmospheric ozone and then subtracting their estimates of those from the actual changes, they found that a clear upward trend in ozone recovery had been occurring since the 1990s.

In 1958 scientists discovered Earth’s most extraordinary mountain range—the Gamburtsev Subglacial Mountains—buried beneath the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. The mountains were located where it was believed that the vast ice sheet first formed, but how the mountains themselves had formed had been a mystery for more than 50 years. A seven-country team of researchers analyzed new geophysical data and published its findings in November. They concluded that multiple tectonic events, rather than a single one, had formed the mountains. A billion years ago tectonic collisions crushed what had been a mountain range there, but they also created and preserved a crustal root beneath the former mountains and formed the East Antarctic rift system—a fracture in Earth’s surface 3,000 km (1,860 mi) long extending from East Antarctica to India. Later, about 250 million–100 million years ago, the breakup of the supercontinent Gondwana caused the rock of the old root to warm, and that action, together with tectonic movements along the rift, forced the land upward into a new range of mountains.

In October 2011 scientists discovered a crack 29 km (18 mi) long across the ice shelf of Pine Island Glacier in Antarctica that was believed would result in the formation of an iceberg.NASA—Reuters/LandovScientists flying over Pine Island Glacier in October made an unexpected discovery: a massive crack running about 29 km (18 mi) across the glacier’s floating tongue. The rift, 80 m (260 ft) wide, marked the creation of a new iceberg with an area of some 880 sq km (340 sq mi). The glacier, one of Antarctica’s fastest moving, drained about 10% of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.